The present paper develops a framework for interpreting Upper Paleolithic artifacts from an analysis of material complexity, numeration systems, and timekeeping using cultural categorizations (Hayden & Villeneuve, 2011), insights on the emergence of number terms in language (Menninger, 1992), and the astronomy practices of 33 contemporary hunter–gatherer societies (Yale’s Electronic Human Relations Area Files World Cultures database). Key findings: (1) an absence of societies with minimal material complexity and later-stage numeration systems, suggesting that material scaffolding may be important to realizing explicit number concepts, (2) the consistency of material complexity with both early- and later-stage numeration systems, emphasizing that material complexity may precede and inform the development of complexity in numeration systems, (3) the compatibility of astronomical practices with the spectrum of complexity in material culture and numeration systems, suggesting that the awareness of time may precede both, and (4) the increasing quantification of time consistent with greater material and numeration complexity, suggesting the availability of numbers as a cognitive technology may enable the structuring of time. These findings suggest that astronomy originates in the ability to estimate and infer contextual relations among natural phenomena and transitions from these natural associations to material representations and cognitive technologies that mediate conceptual apprehensions of time as a substance that can be quantified. Given that artifacts may act as scaffolds for explicit concepts of numbers and numbers scaffold explicit concepts of time, prehistoric artifacts such as the Blombos Cave beads (ca. 75,000), Abri Blanchard and Cellier artifacts (ca. 28,000), and Taï plaque (ca. 14,000) may represent similar scaffolding and conceptual development in numbers and time. It is proposed that the prehistoric societies making these artifacts possessed, in addition to material complexity, the abilities to express quantities in language and to use material externalization and cognitive technologies. Further, the Abri Blanchard artifact is proposed to represent externalized working memory, a very modern interaction between mind and material culture.